IE 286 
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ORATION 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 




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C i T Y G Y E R N M E N T 



CITIZENS OF BOSTON, 



MUSIC TIALL, JULY 5, 1^75 



JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE 



BOSTO N : 

; L AND CIIUUCHILL, CITY PRINTERS" 

No. 39 ARCH STREET. 
1875. 




Glass E?fc b 

Book X- 7<V 

' 1375 



OR ATI ON 



DELIVERED BEFORE THE 



CITY GOVERNMENT 



CITIZENS OF BOSTON, 



MUSIC HALL, JULY 5, 1875 



BY 

JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. 



BOSTON : 
ROCKWELL AND CHURCHILL, CITY PRINTERS, 

No. 39 ARCH STREET. 

1875. 




Exchange 
N. Y. Pub. Lb. 



*■ 

' 0. 



CITY OF BOSTON 



In Board of Aldermen, July 6, 1875. 

Ordered, That the thanks of the City Council be pre- 
sented to Rev. James Freeman Clarke for the very inter- 
esting and instructive Oration delivered by him before the 
municipal authorities on the occasion of the observance of 
the ninety-ninth anniversary of the Declaration of Ameri- 
can Independence ; and that he be requested to furnish a 
copy thereof for publication. 

Passed ; sent down for concurrence. 

JOHN T. CLARK, 

Chairman. 

In Common Council, July 8, 1875. 

Passed in concurrence. 

H. J. BOARDMAN, 

President. 

Approved July 9, 1875. 

SAMUEL C. COBB, 

Mayor. 



ORATION. 



c£#{o« 



It is an old custom, as you know, in many of our 
Congregational churches, to have what is called a 
preparatory lecture, the purpose of which is to pre- 
pare the minds of those who are to commune, so that 
they shall partake of that feast of brotherly love in 
the right spirit. I consider my little speech to-day, 
this ninety-ninth anniversary of the Declaration of 
American Independence, to be a kind of preparatory 
lecture for the great feast to be held next year in 
Philadelphia. On the 4th of July, 1876, the thirty- 
seven sister States of this Republic, after a hundred 
years' experience of free institutions, will meet to 
thank God, and take courage. Certainly it is one 
of those happy coincidences which seem something 
more than mere accidents, that the people of this 
great Union, so long divided, and now so happily re- 
united, shall inaugurate the new century of freedom 
and union, henceforth one and inseparable, by giving 
and receiving the hand of fellowship, in the City oe 
Brotherly Love. Freedom and union ; for with- 
out freedom, what is union worth, and without union, 



6 ORATION. 

how can we maintain freedom? All that I can ex- 
pect to do to-day is to say a few words which may 
help a little to prepare our minds for the coming of 
that majestic commemoration. And, in order to do 
this, I shall endeavor to illustrate, as far as the time 
permits, the Worth of Republican Institutions, 
as shown by what they have done for us during the 
last one hundred years. We can be really and sin- 
cerely united only by a common love. What the 
people of this country have in common are their free 
institutions. If they value these, they will be 
united; if they undervalue or despise them, no 
hearty union is possible. Every word, therefore, 
which can be truly said to show the solid worth of 
our Republican form of Government will have a 
direct tendency to promote union and brotherly fel- 
lowship. But such words must be those of truth 
and soberness. The time has happily passed by 
when a Fourth of July oration was expected to contain 
only glittering generalities, idle boasting, and empty 
declarations concerning the superiority of America, 
its people and institutions, to all the rest of the 
world. The time has happily come when, though 
one should speak with the tongues of men and of 
angels, and have not Truth, he will become as a 
sounding brass and as a tinkling cymbal. 

And yet, though I should like to give all the 
importance I can to my work to-day, I am obliged to 



JULY 5, 18 75. i 

admit that you, Mr. Mayor, and you, gentlemen of the 
City Government, have already given us the real pre- 
paratory lecture before next year's centennial. Your 
splendid celebration of the Battle of Bunker's Hill, 
conspicuous as a magnificent pageant, was vastly 
more remarkable for the way in which Boston 
offered the right hand of fellowship to the South, and 
in which the South accepted the offer. For the first 
time during a hundred years the jealousies, rivalries 
and ignorant animosities between the Northern and 
Southern people disappeared in a generous outbreak 
of mutual good-will. Without disguising any of her 
old convictions, Boston said to these Southern 
soldiers, "Our fight is over; let us now forget the 
past, and be friends." And the Southern soldiers 
accepted this courtesy as freely as it was nobly 
given. The echo of this warm brotherly meeting has 
gone out through all the land, and has struck that 
note of reconciliation, which we trust will be followed 
next year by a grand choral of harmony. Sad 
South Carolina, crushed between the upper and the 
nether millstones, has heard the sound of it, and is 
glad. Far Louisiana rejoices along her sugar-coast, 
and gathers hope. Eveu the " New York Nation," 
which has carried its honest hatred of tawdry sentimen- 
talism so far as almost to forget the real place senti- 
ment must always occupy in human affairs, has been 
forced to admit that the political importance of this 



8 ORATIOX. 

outbreak of sentiment can hardly be over-estimated. 
It seems now as if the period of demagogues, of 
military interference with State rights, of ignorance 
misled by low cunning, was approaching its end; and 
the intelligence and virtue of the South, honestly 
accepting the new situation, may be able to save that 
fair region from its plunderers. One man among us, 
gifted with that prophetic insight which is born 
of unselfish sagacity, foresaw this, and advised it as 
the only possible way of reconstruction. Ten years 
ago, in his farewell address to the Legislature, our 
great war-governor, John Albion Andrew, the pilot 
who weathered the storm, told us that until the 
South was governed by the intelligence of the South 
no real reconstruction could take place. Then he 
gave the advice which we have at last accepted; and 
asked us, having done our past duty in a vigorous 
prosecution of war, now to do our present duty in a 
vigorous prosecution of peace. I congratulate you, 
Mr. Mayor and gentlemen of the City Govern- 
ment, that you have not lost this great opportunity, 
but have known how to avail yourselves of it, and to 
turn this noble celebration of the past into a nobler 
preparation for the future. And once again may we 
not say, that it is not a mere coincidence, but rather 
a happy providence, which makes this old city of 
Boston, the place "where American freedom raised 
its first voice," — the Cradle of Liberty a hundred 



JULY 5, 1875. 9 

years ago, — to become again to-day the Cradle of 
Reunion and of National Brotherhood? 

Merely to boast of free institutions is always fool- 
ish, but to bring proofs of their value can never be 
unreasonable. From the beginning there have al- 
ways been prophets of evil, announcing the speedy 
downfall of this Republic; always those who have 
preferred the glare and glitter of courts and aristoc- 
racies to the simple happiness of a democracy. 
Using the pithy definition of Abraham Lincoln, I 
shall therefore proceed to show the advantages we 
have derived in this country by maintaining, during a 
hundred years, a government " of the people, by the 
people, and for the people." 

In this definition, the second clause gives the chief 
characteristic which distinguishes a Republic. Under 
a monarchy or an oligarchy the government may be 
" of the people " and " for the people," but it is not 
w by the people." When the people of France voted 
in Napoleonism by the plebiscite, Imperialism was 
then " of the people," for it proceeded from them. It 
might also have been "for the people," if administered 
wholly for the public good. But it was not " by the 
people," for it was a centralized government, a 
bureaucracy, every little commune in France being 
governed by a mayor appointed in Paris. A good 
king, like Alfred, may govern "for the people," but 
his government was not " of the people " nor " b}^ the 



10 ORATION. 

people." Free institutions may exist under an aristo- 
cratic government, like that of England, where indi- 
vidual liberty is made secure by Magna Charta, the 
writ of Habeas Corpus and Trial by Jury, and where 
the rights of free speech, and liberty of worship, and 
a free press are secured to all. But it is not a gov- 
ernment "by the people," but by a comparatively 
small body of rich men. It is, in fact, a Ploutocracy. 
It is so far " of the people " that whenever the major- 
ity of intelligent Englishmen wish a change, they 
obtain it, as, in 1828, even the iron will of "Wellington 
gave way to the demand for Catholic emancipation. 
But government "by the people," by the whole people, 
in local districts, by their representatives in larger 
communities, was the great experiment begun here 
a hundred years ago, which has been continued to 
the present time. 

The main question to be settled was this : " Can 
the people of any country govern themselves? " And 
that being answered in the affirmative, the second 
question was, " Can they govern themselves better 
than they can be governed by others? " These ques- 
tions have always been answered differently, accord- 
ing as men have had more or less faith in human 
nature. The vast progress made in this country in a 
hundred years, in population, in wealth, in general 
comfort, in general information, does not, by itself, 
prove the advantage of popular self-government. The 



JULY 5, 



11 



progress, indeed, has been immense. In 1775 we 
were thirteen colonies. "We now are thirty-seven 
States and eleven territories. We then had a popu- 
lation of about two million and a half, of which 
Massachusetts contained more than any other State, 
except Virginia, and had about 360,000 persons. 
The United States, to-day, contains about 40 millions 
of people, and fifteen of the States have more than one 
million of inhabitants. Then, it was one of the poor- 
est countries in the world; now, its resources are 
characterized by an English statistical work, as " enor- 
mous." Then, its territory was a little strip of coun- 
try east of the Alleghanies; now, its area contains 
three millions of square miles, nearly equal to the area 
of Europe ; and we have nearly as many miles of rail- 
road in operation, as in all of Europe. We send 
through the mails 750 millions of letters every year, 
or nineteen letters to each inhabitant, exceeded only 
by Great Britain, which sends 979 millions a year, or 
thirty letters to each inhabitant. Our mercantile 
marine, thougli only half that of Great Britain, is 
larger than that of any other nation. We imported, 
in 1874, goods to the value of 567 millions of dollars, 
and exported goods to the value of 586 millions of 
dollars. In the same year we exported 71 millions of 
bushels of wheat, of which 60 millions of bushels went 
to Great Britain. But this 71 millions exported was 
less than one-fourth part of the amount raised in the 



12 ORATION. 

country. According to the census tables of 1870, the 
annual product of the total manufacturing industries 
of the United States amounted to more than four 
thousand millions of dollars.* 

Such statistics as these may give a general idea of 
the vast progress of this nation during the last hun- 
dred years. The invention of the steam-engine, 
steamboat, locomotive-engine and railroad, and the 
electric telegraph, have made it possible to colonize 
the great West, and to keep this vast area of terri- 
tory united under one government. But the main 
superiority of this country over Europe is that it 
offers such comfort and advantages to the poor. This 
is shown by the immense immigration of the humbler 
classes to our shores. By the census of 1870, there 
were living in the United States, more than five and 
a half millions of persons born in foreign countries; 
of whom more than a million and a half came from 
Germany, nearly two millions from Ireland, and half 
a million from England. 

The majority of this five and a half millions 
of people were in humble circumstances. And what 
an attraction must not this country have exerted, 
to cause such numbers to give up the ties of 
home, to break through the walls of habit which 
surround us all and keep us in our places, to 
collect the sums necessary to pay the expenses 

* United States census for 1870. Almanach de Gotha, etc. 



JULY o, 1875. 13 

of the journey over land and ocean ! The cost of 
this emigration, at only $100 each, would amount 
to $550,000,000. 

We do not mean to attribute all this prosperity 
and progress to Republican institutions. It is no 
doubt also due to the abundance, cheapness, and fer- 
tility of the soil, the demand for labor, the energy 
and intelligence of the race by which it was first 
colonized, and the universal diffusion of education 
and religious convictions, which have helped to 
develop the forces of the American people. But 
consider what a difference there would have been, if, 
instead of our free institutions, and our federal Re- 
public, this continent had been occupied, as Europe 
is, by twenty different empires and monarchies; each 
having its standing army, its custom-houses along 
the frontier, its costly court, its soil owned by a few 
rich noblemen; its restrictions on industry, trade, the 
press, public meetings ; with no local self-government, 
but official persons appointed by the court, transmit- 
ting all the governing power from above; and the 
citizen a cipher, with no power to alter or improve 
his own condition or that -of his neighbors. We owe 
avast debt to our public schools; but another im- 
mense education has been given to this nation by the 
town-meetings, by the frequent elections, by the dis- 
cussion of all public questions by the people them- 
selves, and by the struggles of party. Then, in 



14 ORATION. 

European countries, a thousand restrictions, the 
growth of centuries, rest like heavy weights crush- 
ing clown the energies of the mind. Here there is 
unlimited competition; the career open to all talents; 
the highest prizes offered to any who are able to 
grasp them; the largest part of the products of in- 
dustry going into the hands of those who earn them. 
And from all this results that terrible energy, that 
ceaseless activity of our people, which, like the rush 
of the earth on its axis, we do not perceive, because 
we all share it, and because it is never interrupted. 

No doubt every work of man has its good and its 
evil. The advantage of a monarchy with aristocratic 
institutions is, that it gives greater advantages to the 
few ; the advantages of a Republic with free institu- 
tions and equal laws is, that it gives a wider educa- 
tion and larger comfort to the many. People who 
have plenty of money, and who care only for them- 
selves, do well, therefore, to go and live in Europe, 
and enjoy the various luxuries they can there find. 
But those who can taste the higher satisfactions 
which come from the sight of human progress; from 
taking part in the conflict against ignorance, error, 
wrong ; from helping on great reforms, and contribut- 
ing to the diffusion of knowledge, refinement, and 
high principle, among the masses of men, — let them 
come to America and help us, as so many noble 
foreigners have done, from Lafayette and Steuben 



JULY 5, 1875. 15 

to Follen and Schurz, in the greatest battle ever 
waged on earth, — the battle of light with darkness, 
of good with evil. For America is the field of this 
majestic struggle, and here is to be decided at last 
the destinies of the human race. 

If, then, it be asked, what has been accomplished by 
our Republican institutions during this hundred years, 
I would reply, that they have demonstrated four 
facts, viz.: (1.) That there can be universal religion 
without an established church. (2.) That there can 
be universal education without sectarian schools. 
(3.) That there can be universal order without a 
standing army. (4.) That freedom and equal rights 
make the most stable government. 

We are so accustomed, in this country, to religious 
institutions which are supported solely by the people 
themselves, that we sometimes forget that we are the 
only civilized nation which does not have an estab- 
lished church, or churches, supported by taxation. It 
has been, and is now, the almost universal opinion, 
that if religion is not maintained by law, it will cease 
to be maintained at all. All the nations of Europe 
are taxed to support public worship, and the result of 
this is, that many of them have come to confound 
Christianity with an odious form of government, and 
so have lost their faith in religion itself. Both the 
friends and foes of Christianity suppose that it must be 
held up by the State, or that it will fall. This scepticism 



16 ORATION. 

is the natural consequence of the union of Church 
and State. Even within my own memory, every man 
in Massachusetts was obliged to pay a tax to support 
the Congregational church ; which was the estab- 
lished church, and all others were dissenters. The 
law had, to be sure, been so modified, that one who did 
not wish to worship in the parish church might " sign 
off" (as it was termed), and divert his tax to some 
other church which he liked better. But pay he 
must to one or to another. And when this last re- 
mains of an established church disappeared in Massa- 
chusetts, by the revision of the Constitution in 1820, 
many good and wise men predicted the downfall of 
Christianity. I myself heard a speech, made by so 
sagacious a person as Judge Story, in which he de- 
clared that in consequence of allowing the people of 
this State to pay or not, as they pleased, for the sup- 
port of public worship, in his opinion there would 
not be a church left in Massachusetts in twenty-five 
years from that time. 

What, then, is the result in the United States of this 
strange and hazardous experiment of leaving relig- 
ious institutions to be supported or neglected, ac- 
cording to the will of the people? The result has 
been, that the institutions are more widely, liberally 
and universally supported in the United States than 
in any part of the world. There are in this country, 
by the census of 1870, 72,000 religious societies, 



JULY 5, 1875. 17 

63,000 church edifices, and church property to the 
value of $354,000,000 — with sitting accommodations 
for more than twenty-one millions of persons. There 
are 43,000 clergymen in the United States, and the 
amount annually raised for the support of religious 
worship must be from twenty to thirty millions of 
dollars, beside the large sums given for missions and 
other religious purposes. This is probably a greater 
amount in proportion to population than that paid for 
the support of any church in the world, except the 
Church of England, whose income, drawn from a 
population of twenty-two millions, is supposed to be 
about $40,000,000 a year. 

We have proved, therefore, by our experiment of 
a hundred years, that men feel the need of relig- 
ious instruction and religious worship — and that 
they gladly give their money for this object without 
any compulsion. And the census also shows, that, 
during the two decades, extending from 1850 to 1860, 
and from 1860 to 1870, the proportional amounts 
contributed to these objects have not diminished, but 
on the contrary steadily increased. The church prop- 
erty in 1850 amounted to $3.78 for every inhabitant; 
in 1860, it was $5.51; and in 1870, it was $9.35. 
Judging by this test alone, we see no reason for 
doubting that freedom does more for the support of 
religion than is ever done by law. 

We have also demonstrated, by our experiment in 



18 OKATION. 

America, that free institutions can give a wider 
education to the people than has yet been given by a 
monarchy or an aristocracy. The people of this 
country were early so sagacious as to see that the 
permanence of free institutions depends on the intel- 
ligence of the people. And they also saw that this 
intelligence could only be obtained by a public-school 
system which would give every child in the land free 
elementary instruction. When the people are to 
govern, the people must be educated. A government 
by the people will not be a government for the 
people unless the people are able to know what is 
really good for them; and foreseeing that the time 
would come when women, as well as men, would 
vote, they have made the schools free for girls as well 
as for boys. Public free schools are, indeed, the 

x chief defence of a free people. They make standing 
armies unnecessary; for an intelligent people will al- 
ways be able to defend itself. No matter how large 

/■ the sum spent on free schools, this expenditure is the 
wisest economy, for it increases the wealth and tax- 
able property of the whole State by increasing the 
producing power of every individual. Educated in- 
telligent labor," as we all know, is vastly more pro- 
ductive than ignorant labor, and, besides this, it has 
been abundantly proved that education diminishes 
crime, and in this way is also a great economy. I 
find, for instance, a paper by that well-known scholar 



JULY 5, 18 75. 19 

and wise philanthropist, Mr. Charles Loring Brace, 
in the reports of last year's Prison Congress at St. 
Louis, in which these facts are given: In 1871, out 
of 50,000 prisoners in New York jails, nearly 20,000 
could not read or write. Of the illiterate class in the 
city, which amounted to about 60,000, one in every 
three had committed a crime that year, for which he 
was sent to prison ; while of those who could read and 
write, only one in twenty-seven was thus guilty. 
Taking the whole State of New York, it appears that 
one-third of the crime is committed by the illiterate, 
who constitute only one-sixteenth of the population. 
In Massachusetts the proportion of criminals in jail 
who cannot read or write is usually about thirty per 
cent, of the whole number. In 1871 about one in 
every twenty of those who could not read or write 
were sentenced for crimes, while of those who were 
able to do so, only one in one hundred and twenty- 
six committed these offences. 

Now, it may be true that such education as is given 
in , our common schools does not necessarily make 
Christians, and it is not meant for that purpose. The 
home and the church are for that purpose. But it is 
very certain, if there is any truth in facts and figures, 
that this common-school education does have a strong 
tendency to prevent persons from becoming thieves, 
burglars, pickpockets, intemperate, and murderers. 
Schools cultivate habits of order, regularity, industry 



20 ORATION. 

and self-control. They take children from the streets 
and from idleness. They open their minds to 
^ thoughts of large interests. They indirectly en- 
courage what is good and right in all their lessons. 
To denounce them because they are secular, and 
do not teach religion, is therefore pure folly. What 
are Sunday Schools for, but to teach religion? No 
sensible man pretends that when you have taught 
children to read, write and cipher, you have given to 
them all they need in order to become wise and good 
men and women. But you have given them " The 
Key of Knowledge." You have put their feet in 
the right way. ^You have reduced their chance of 
becoming criminals from thirty-three in a hundred to 
three in a hundred.^ And you have made it certain 
that the majority of the voters who are to make your 
laws, and decide what shall be done with your prop- 
erty, cannot become the blind tools of selfish dema- 
gogues. 

Mr. Maurice Block, a recent French writer on 
Social Science ("L'Europe Politique et • Sociale"), 
tells us that in the United States popular instruction 
comes nearest to its ideal. He adds that it is the 
only country in the world which might dispense with 
"compulsory education;" but adds that it was the first 
country which declared it to be the right of the 
community to insist on elementary instruction, 



JULY 5, 1875. 21 

» 

quoting the laws of Massachusetts in 1668 and of 
Connecticut in 1650. 

The United States has led the way in giving 
universal education to the people, and making this 
education purely secular; leaving religious instruc- 
tion in the hands of the churches, where it belongs. 
Holland followed our example, in 1806, by separating 
the school completely from the church; and, in spite 
of the efforts of the Catholic Church, the law of 1857 
maintained the neutrality of primary schools. Sweden 
and Norway also give gratuitous education in primary 
schools, and make it compulsory on parents. Switz- 
erland has followed this example. Even Turkey 
has adopted free elementary schools, and compulsory 
education; and it is stated that ninety-five children 
out of a hundred are in the Turkish schools. All 
the countries of Europe recognize the right of gov- 
ernment to insist on the education of the people. 
But all, with perhaps one or two exceptions, arc 
behind this country in the sums expended for educa- 
tion in the proportion of children in the schools, and 
in the statistics of illiteracy. 

We have been able, in the United States, to make 
education almost universal by making it first secular; 
and, secondly, free. Free schools, supported by the 
whole community, and carefully abstaining from any 
interference with religious opinion, have produced this 
result. In Europe, where the whole power of an ab- 



22 ORATION. 

solute goverment has been at the service of the church 
to enable it to educate the people, the people have not 
been educated. The object of the church has always 
been, and very properly from its point of view, not to 
educate the intellect, but to train the heart in religious 
sentiments. The church did not desire that the 
people should learn to read and write, but that they 
should be carefully taught the catechism. Conse- 
quently, in 1866, the French minister of war reported 
that out of a hundred conscripts only thirty could read. 
By tables published in Turin, in 1864, by the ex- 
minister of public instruction, it appeared that out of 
a thousand males in Sardinia and Lombardy, four 
hundred and sixty-one did not know their letters. In 
Tuscany, six hundred and forty-one out of a thousand 
were equally ignorant. In Naples and Sicily, eight 
hundred and thirty-five men out of a thousand, and 
nine hundred and thirty-eight women out of a thou- 
sand, could not read or write. Since Italy was united, 
things have improved ; yet, by the census of 1864, out 
of twenty-one millions less than four millions could 
read and write. In Spain, about seventy-five per 
cent, of the people are equally ignorant. In Spanish 
America, seven-eighths of the people are in the same 
condition. Meantime, in the whole "United States, in- 
cluding young children, the recently emancipated 
slaves, the poor Southern whites and foreigners, only 
four millions and a half out of thirty-eight millions of 



JULY 5, 1S75. 23 

the population could not read in 1870. In Massachu- 
setts, including children and foreigners, only one in 
twenty is unable to read; and two hundred and eighty- 
seven thousand out of fourteen hundred thousand are 
at school. In the whole United States there are one 
hundred and forty-one thousand schools, and there 
are more than seven millions of pupils in attendance. 
The money expended in the whole United States for 
schools in the year 1870 was ninety-five millions of 
dollars, or about $2.50 for every man, woman and 
child in the Union. Sixty-four millions of this was 
raised by taxation for the public schools. 

Compare with this vast sum freely given for educa- 
tion in this country, the trifling amount levied by 
taxation in England, which, in 1867, amounted to less 
than two million dollars, all the rest of the education 
of the people of England being left to local endow- 
ments and private charities. Twenty years before 
that time, in 1847, Macaulay, in one of his most power- 
ful speeches, had pointed out how the absence of 
general education in England had led to terrible riots, 
the direct effect " of the gross, brutish ignorance of the f 
population, left brutes in the midst of Christianity, 
savages in the midst of civilization." " No proposi- 
tion," he adds, " can be more strange than this, that 
the State is bound to punish its subjects for not know- 
ing their duty, but at the same time is to take no step 
to let them know what their duty is." 



24 ORATION". 

If Macaulay justly charges the ferocious, riotous 
character of the populace of England to the absence 
of universal public instruction, we may say, on the 
other hand, that our own wonderful spectacle on the 
17th of June may be partly credited to the influence 
of our public schools. Massachusetts, with fourteen 
hundred thousand inhabitants, pays every year, for 
education, nearly five millions of dollars; of which over 
three millions is for its public schools. The county of 
Suffolk, with a population, in 1870, of 270,000, had 
50,000 children at school. Is there any other city in 
the world which could have collected a crowd such as 
we saw here on that day; so orderly, so quiet, so well- 
dressed, where you could scarcely find a single 
drunken or noisy man ; a crowd amid which the most 
delicate lady or child could everywhere go, as safely 
as in a private parlor? I think, Mr. Mayor, and citi- 
zens of Boston, we have a right to take some pride in 
that remarkable exhibition of the results of a S} stem of 
universal education, began by our fathers in 1642, and 
maintained to the present hour. This great result of 
Republican institutions is not likely to be abandoned. 
It began with the Puritan Fathers of ISTew England. 
The " Catholic World," certainly an impartial wit- 
ness when it praises the Puritans, in the number 
for April, 1870, says that " It is to the credit of the 
American people, at least the Calvinistic portion of 
them, that they have, from the earliest colonial times, 



JULY 5, 1875. 25 

taken a deep interest in the education of the young," 
and that " the present system of common schools at 
the public expense " originated among the Congrega- 
tionalists, and in Massachusetts. William Penn, 
Washington, and Jefferson, all exhorted this nation to 
" educate the people." And since every other system 
has proved ineffectual, and since our system of free 
schools, independent of every sect, and teaching the 
poorest child the elements of knowledge, has proved 
so successful, the people of this country will continue 
to maintain it, as one of the greatest blessings born 
out of Republican principles and the methods of a 
free State. 

Another great result of this hundred years' experi- 
ment of government by the people and for the 
people is the complete demonstration that the 
authority of the State can be supported, and universal 
order maintained, without a standing army. 

The nations of Europe groan under the burden of 
standing armies. Their vast military organizations 
suck the very life-blood of the people. The colossal 
armies of Europe take from productive labor in time 
of peace 2,700,000 men; and their number on a war 
footing mounts up to 6,500,000. The expense of 
maintaining these armies is $600,000,000 in time of 
peace, — and the time taken each year from productive 
industry amounts to eight hundred millions of days. 
More than a hundred years ago Montesquieu wrote 



26 ORATION. 

these words: "A new disease has gone through 
Europe, and seized our princes with the desire to in- 
crease their armies. It is a contagious disease; for, as 
soon as one State increases its troops, the others sud- 
denly augment theirs; so that nothing is gained but 
the common ruin." The size of these armies is now 
three times what it was when Montesquieu wrote 
that sentence, — so that now the expense has become 
truly terrific. But this very expense is an advantage, 
for it keeps down a little the size of the armies. A 
standing army, fed by conscription, is a temptation to 
war. If France had not possessed such an army, 
she never would have attacked Prussia. If England 
had not possessed such an army, she never would 
have sent her eighty thousand soldiers to the Crimea, in 
a senseless attempt to keep up the balance of power in 
Europe, — an attempt which cost her £78,000,000, or 
nearly $400,000,000, and has disgusted her for the 
time with interfering any more in the politics of the 
continent. 

During the last hundred years the United States 
has been engaged in several wars; the war of IS 12 
with England, the Florida war, the war with 
Mexico, the great civil war. All of these wars 
were caused by the slave power. All were occasioned 
by slavery, seeking to extend itself; for slavery 
itself was a condition of permanent war. It was the 
repetition in our time of the feudal system, in which 



JULY 5, 18 75. 27 

a small body, belonging to a superior race, keeps 
down a much larger body by being always armed and 
always prepared against insurrection. But now that 
slavery has perished, we shall be as peaceful as we 
are powerful. We reduced our army, a year ago, to 
twenty thousand regular troops, — a number hardly 
large enough to be visible when scattered along our 
immense frontier. "We thus proclaim to the world 
our peaceful purposes toward foreign nations; and, 
also that we do not fear any danger coming from 
abroad. And as regards insurrection at home, the 
people themselves can be depended on to put down 
any such attempt, should it ever come. 

We do not need an army to maintain domestic order, 
or to support law. The people themselves take care 
of that. Fifty years ago Dr. Lieber, travelling 
in this country, was struck by the universal respect 
for law ; and saw an evidence of it even in the sign- 
boards on our bridges, " Keep to the right, as the 
law directs." A government by the people makes it 
the personal interest of every man in the community 
to maintain order. The laws which the people make 
themselves, the people will themselves maintain. Few 
things in this country have more surprised European 
travellers than to see the universal security and quiet 
where no soldiers are to be noticed, and where it is ex- 
tremely difficult ever to find a policeman. The 
explanation is always at hand. In the States of 



28 ORATION. 

Europe it is the business of the government to 
execute the laws; here it is the business of every 
citizen to see that they are enforced. A nation without 
a large standing army is weak for offensive war ; and 
it is an advantage that it should be so. But it is 
strong for defence; in its prosperity, in the comfort 
and intelligence of the people, and in the might which 
slumbers in a freeman's arm. It may be said that we 
do not need standing armies here as Europe does, 
because we are not surrounded by hostile States. But 
that is also owing to our being a Federal Republic. 
Massachusetts does not need a standing army to de- 
fend itself from an attack of New York*; because New 
York and Massachusetts have a common interest, and 
belong to the same great union. Let the states of 
Europe become republics, and form a union among 
themselves, and they also could disband their armies, 
or reduce them to a mere police force like ours. But 
wars will never cease so long as each of the great 
nations has its immense army and fleet, which a few 
men, sitting round a green table, can, at any time, 
hurl upon their neighbors. 

It is this principle also which has made our govern- 
ment the strongest in the world, — the least liable to 
convulsions, overthrow or change. Fisher Ames put 
the difference between a republic and a monarchy in 
one of those epigrams which contain the substance of 
a long discussion. "In a republic," said he, "you 



JULY 5, 1875. 29 

are like people on a raft; your feet are always wet, 
but you will not sink. In a monarchy you are like 
passengers in a ship, much more comfortable while 
you are safe; but touch a rock, and you go to 
the bottom." We have been on our raft now for 
a hundred years. Our feet have often been under 
water; but the raft floats still. How many of the 
monarchies of Christendom have been wrecked 
during this interval! How many dynasties have 
been driven from their homes! What repeated 
changes have taken place in the map of Europe! 
And what government is there in the world, beside 
our own, which could have put down the terrible 
rebellion of the Slave States; could have organized 
an enormous army and a powerful navy so sud- 
denly; could have established and kept up an 
effective blockade along a thousand miles of coast; 
could have originated a new system of finance, 
and borrowed such immense sums to carry on 
the war, and sustain its credit? And this, too, 
was done in the face of a formidable opposition 
in the free States, and without abridging any of the 
guaranties of freedom. Europe saw with aston- 
ishment how, in the midst of this portentous strug- 
gle, the press was allowed full freedom; the oppo- 
nents of the government were allowed to meet and 
say almost anything they pleased; and that a great 
presidential election took place in which the ballot 



30 ORATION. 

was left free, and the people were permitted to vote 
whether this government, struggling' for its life, 
should be supported or not. All this proved that 
ours is the strongest government in the world, and 
that it is so strong because every man in the land 
considers it his own, and has a personal stake in its 
safety and power. 

" But our feet are always under water," you say, 
" and that is disagreeable." Yes, it is disagreeable ; 
but perhaps it is also profitable. On a raft all are 
sailors, and in a Republic it is every man's business to 
see that the State receives no detriment. The price of 
liberty is not only perpetual vigilance, but personal 
responsibility in all the citizens. Thus we are ed- 
ucated to a true patriotism. ~No doubt we have many 
battles to fight still. We shall have a long battle 
with the trading politicians, with the caucus, with 
rings, with the lobby. We shall have to fight for our 
school system, with those who wish to make it sec- 
tarian. We shall have to invent and apply new 
methods to save the tax-payers from being plundered 
by rings who buy votes and bribe legislators. Some 
of these inventions have already been made, and are 
being applied. The State of Illinois is now trying, 
with success, the plan of minority representation; with 
such success as to have reduced the bills passed by its 
Legislature from eight hundred to two hundred in the 
first session under the new elections. The State of 



JULY 5, 1875. 31 

Wisconsin has embodied in its Constitution a provision 
pre venting- its Legislature or its municipalities from 
imposing a higher tax than a certain fixed rate, based 
on the assessment of five years before. The city of 
^New York has now a provision in its charter, by 
means of which three citizens may cause any office- 
holder to be examined in forty-eight hours before a 
judge, in regard to any misconduct which he may 
be intending to commit; so that the day of judg- 
ment for such civic offenders is always close at hand. 
Last winter a Democratic Legislature in Albany 
passed three acts to prevent the pilfering of public 
treasuries; and these are acts which almost make 
every public officer a trustee. 

" Where there is a will there is a way." If we re- 
solve to correct public abuses, as the old abolitionists 
resolved to overthrow slavery, we can correct them 
all. What a lesson of faith and courage is there not 
for us all in that history ! When Mr. Garrison and 
his friends determined to overthrow slavery, it seemed 
the most sublimely ridiculous attempt ever made. 
On the side of slavery was united every social, politi- 
cal, and mercantile interest. It had for its defence 
both of the great parties, the commercial and manu- 
facturing interests, the Presidents, Congress, and the 
U. S. Courts, all the newspapers, fashion in the upper 
circle of society, and the mob below. On the other 
side, the abolitionists had nothing but Truth and Jus- 



32 ORATION. 

tice. Their only weapon was the fact that slavery 
was wrong. With that weapon they conquered in 
the life of a single generation. They kept saying, 
over and over again, " Slavery is wrong ; " and before 
that appeal to the conscience of the people slavery 
tottered and fell. That one cry created the great Re- 
publican party, elected Abraham Lincoln, drove the 
South into secession, by which they attacked both 
Union and Freedom at once, and created the deter- 
mination which at last conquered in thac awful 
struggle. 

And shall we, who have lived through this experi- 
ence, be afraid of a Lobby or a Ring? Shall we 
tremble, because a caucus of political demagogues 
undertakes to dictate what we must do? Their 
power may seem enormous; but only defy it, and it 
crumbles to the ground. Let good men and true men 
have free speech and a free press, and they are 
more than a match for all the combined rascality of 
the country. Those who make politics a trade are, 
no doubt, astonished and angry when the people 
presume to select men for office outside of the 
party programme. But they will have to bear it. 
They appear to suppose that offices belong to the 
politicians, and that we are taking their private prop- 
erty if we prefer to send to Washington an honest, 
sensible, business man, outside of their clique. These 
partisans seem to me like the people who stand in a 



JULY 5, 1875. 33 

queue waiting- for their turn to get tickets to a popu- 
lar lecture or concert. If any man steps in before 
you from the outside, you are displeased, and you re- 
quest him to go to the foot of the line and take his 
turn. So the politicians stand in the line of succes- 
sion, waiting their turn to be nominated by the cau- 
cus, and are much disgusted if the people choose to 
set aside their little arrangement, and take a better 
man outside of the line. 

All we need in order to accomplish reforms, and 
put down abuses in public affairs are those great ele- 
mentary forces, Faith and Work. We must believe 
in the people, believe that the people honestly mean 
to do what is right, that when they see the truth they 
will follow it. And then we must be willing to ivork 
to make them see it. 

It is not a new thing to have rings which plunder 
the people, to enrich a few leaders. This has been 
the case under every monarchy and every aristocracy. 
The new thing is to have them successfully opposed 
and conquered, as in the case of Tweed and his fel- 
low-robbers. Just such a ring as that surrounded 
Louis XIV. and ^Napoleon III. ; only instead of being 
plain Tweeds, Connollys or Sweeney s, they were 
marquises and counts, Persignys and De Mornys. 
But who ever saw these titled Tweeds and Sweeneys 
sent to the penitentiary, driven into exile, or com- 
pelled to disgorge their plunder? And how was this 



34 ORATION. 

victory over the New York King accomplished? 
They seemed to own the city. They were sure of as 
many votes as they needed at every election. They 
could pass almost any law at Albany. They were 
so strongly entrenched, with a great mass of ignorant 
voters behind them, and the ballot-boxes in their own 
hands, that it seemed a hopeless thing to try to over- 
throw them. What, then, overturned their power? 
Publicity, — that is, the voice of the people, speaking 
through a free press. A strange terror, a panic only 
known to the plunderers who live among free institu- 
tions, took possession of them. This vague, wonder- 
ful power, which we call public opinion, lifted up its 
voice, and then this edifice of fraud fell into sudden 
ruin. While Mr. Tweed was considering which for- 
eign mission he had better accept, he went to the 
penitentiary. 

It is true that the first attempt at reforming the 
Civil Service has failed. We have not succeeded, as 
yet, in taking the public offices out of the hands of 
the partisan politicians. Men are put into office, not 
to do its duties, but to be rewarded for political ser- 
'vices, by getting all the money out of the office they 
can. This evil principle, that to the victors belong 
the spoils, and that the spoils are all the offices of 
the country, inaugurated by the Democratic party, 
under Gen. Jackson, has been carried to its climax 
by the Republican party of to-day. This disgraceful 



JULY 5, IS 75. 35 

and ominous result has been reached, — that a 
department of the government has been found to be 
in the pay of the whiskey ring, so that the President 
and Secretary of the Treasury were obliged to con- 
ceal from their own officers their attempts to convict 
these thieves. Those whose business it was to col- 
lect the revenue were assisting the robbers in plun- 
dering it. 

No doubt such facts show that our feet are still 
under water. We do not yet give offices to those 
who will best do the work. But we are attempting 
to do it; and, except in China, this course has 
nowhere been regularly pursued. "Is he honest? 
is he capable?" — this test for appointing to office, 
which was practically applied by all our Presidents 
down to the time of Jackson, will yet be established 
as law, and organized into a working rule. 

Republican institutions rest on faith in hu man 
nature. Unless this faith exists they cannot be sus- 
tained. We must believe that people can be moved 
by the argument that it is right to do this ; that it is 
wrong to do that. Assuming that people prefer to 
do right, unless where prejudice or interest mislead 
them, and also observing that prejudice and self- 
interest will only influence some section or class of 
society, in regard to any special measure, it is clear 
that the majority of people will always be in favor of 
what is right. This fact is the basis of universal 



36 OliATION. 

suffrage, which, giving the power to the whole 
people, protects them against the passions, interests, 
and prejudices of any local faction. But, in order to 
accomplish this, the whole people must be intel- 
lectually educated, so as to be able to understand 
what is right; and must be morally trained, so as to 
feel it their duty to support what is right. This is 
the basis for a universal State education, mental and 
moral. And, beside this, the people must have access 
to sources of information in regard to men and meas- 
ures ; and hence the necessity of free speech and a free 
press. And, beside all this, there must be religion to 
counteract "the tendency to materialization which comes 
from prosperity to vitalize the higher nature, and to 
lift man from the sphere of sense into that of soul. 
Without this influence, progress in art, science, 
literature, and social life would lose its inspiration. 
Yet religion must be taught independently, — in the 
church, not in the school. If religion is taught in the 
schools/religion, being so much more important than 
knowledge, will be sure to make the education of the * 
mind subordinate to the education of the religious 
nature. This would be the case, not only with the 
earnest Catholic teacher, but also with every earnest 
Protestant teacher. The colleges and academies in 
this country, which are in the hands of Protestant 
sects, have often had for their primary purpose to 
build up their sects; and for their secondary object 



JULY 5, 18 75. 37 

to give intellectual instruction. This will always be 
the result; and the more sincerely religious the 
teacher is, the worse will the school be, as a school. 
Thus, in Spain, Austria and Italy, where the educa- 
tion of the people has been confided for centuries to 
the Koman Catholic Church, almost one half of the 
people have never learned to read or write. This was 
not because the church was not faithful and laborious, 
but because it necessarily subordinated intellectual 
instruction to religious culture. It believed, and still 
believes, that it is right to do so. The principle is 
distinctly asserted in such statements as this, which I 
take from the "Catholic World" for April, 1871: 
"We do not prize as highly as some of our country- 
men appear to do, the simple ability to read, write, 
and cipher. . . In extending education, and endeavor- 
ing to train all to be leaders, we have only extended 
presumption, pretension, conceit, indocility, and 
brought incapacity to the surface. We believe the 
peasantry, in the old Catholic countries, two centuries 
ago, were better educated, though for the most part 
unable to read or write, than are the great body of 
the American people. They had faith, they had 
morality, they had a sense of religion." This is manly 
and plain, and we respect the honest conviction from 
which it proceeds, though we dissent absolutely from 
the principle. We do not believe that ignorance is 
ever the mother either of morality or of true devotion. 



38 ORATION. 

* It substitutes superstition for devotion, and cere- 
monies for virtue. 

It is much to the credit of the Puritans, wherever 
they were, that they believed in knowledge, and es- 
tablished schools. But they are almost the only 
exception to the law by which religious sects are led 
to make religion the primary thing in their schools, 
and intellectual development the secondary thing. 

By means of universal suffrage we no doubt intro- 
duce a great deal of ignorance into the government. 
But at the same time we cause all to feel a personal 
interest in the government, and we accomplish the 
great object of widening the basis of representation, 
so as to neutralize the influence of local interests, 
caste prejudices, and private aims. In the same fact, 
we find a basis for woman suffrage. Not because 
woman is the same in character, ability, and quality as 
man, — but because she is differeyii, we need her in- 
fluence in public life. She will bring in new elements, 
and help still further in keeping legislation free from 
special tendencies. She will see many things which 
man does not, as he sees many things which she does 
not. She will make many mistakes, as he makes 
many mistakes, — but hers will be different from his, 
and his from hers, and so they will neutralize each 
other. Providentially, we have prepared for this 
coming change, by freely admitting girls with boys to 
all our schools, and we are now admitting the principle 



JULY 5, 1875. 39 

of coeducation in many of our colleges. Life attains 
its true and best equilibrium not by monotony, but 
by the union of antagonist elements, by differentiation 
and co-operation. For a perfect civilization men and 
women must be companions in everything, — in work 
and play, in study, in all occupations, in art and litera- 
ture, in science and discovery. I do not think our 
politics will be what they ought, till women are legis- 
lators and voters. I do not think our schools and 
colleges will be what they ought, till girls are edu- 
cated with boys, and women are on the boards of 
government and instruction with men. I do not 
think that our prisons, hospitals, charitable institu- 
tions will be really good, till women are in the 
direction together with men. When all careers are 
open to all talents, society will be properly balanced 
by the equipoise of man's force and woman's sym- 
pathy, man's logic and woman's intuition. 

Mr. James Parton, in his " Life of Jefferson," tells 
us that in 1785 America had contributed nothing to 
the intellectual resources of man, except Franklin. 
r We had," says he, " no art, little science, no litera- 
ture; not a poem, not a book, not a picture, not a 
statue, not an edifice." The books of Jonathan. Ed- 
wards and the pictures of Copley may, perhaps, be re- 
garded as exceptions ; but, in the main, this statement 
is correct. We have done a little better since. We 
have produced no Goethe, no Byron, no Rafaelle; but 



40 ORATION. 

it takes more than a hundred years to produce such 
flowers as these. Everything with us has taken a 
practical direction. Our best works of art have been 
our vessels. ' Our great poem has been the country 
itself. Our great edifice has been the national char- 
acter/ We still find our best books in the running 
brooks, the rolling rivers, the majestic mountains, the 
roaring cataracts, the mysterious caverns, the bound- 
less prairies; the lakes, rolling like the ocean; the 
forests, sweeping thousands of miles toward the 
setting sun. It is true that the two writers whose 
works have had the widest circulation in modern 
times are American ; namely, Noah Webster and Har- 
riet Beecher Stowe. Twenty years ago fifty millions 
copies of the books of Noah Webster had been sold, 
to all parts of the world. Of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," so 
many millions of copies had been sold, in 1870, that 
Allibone found it impossible to estimate their number. 
But, after all, our chief contribution to the history of 
the world has been the successful result of these free 
institutions. We have shown that order and freedom 
may be united, that equal rights and universal respect 
for law can be associated. Next to this is our con- 
tribution of men. What great edifice, though it were 
a basilica of St. Peter, or a Strasburgh minster, is 
such an addition to the wealth of mankind as the 
character of George Washington, or of Abraham 
Lincoln? We may not have produced many original 



JULY 5, 1875. 41 

poems; our novels may be often mild imitations of 
European models. But these men are not imitations. 
Untrained in any school of hereditary statesmanship, 
they knew how to guide the nation through dark- 
ness and storm with comsummate ability and without 
personal ambition. As our poet says of Abraham 
Lincoln; Nature, in making him, copied no previous 
model. 

" For him her old world mould aside she threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted, shaped a hero new, 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and true. 

" We knew that outward grace was dust, 
And could not choose but trust 

In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 
And supple-tempered will, 
That bent, like perfect steel, to spring again, and thrust.' 1 

In him, the man sent by God to be our leader, 
what a union of modesty and self-reliance, of caution 
and courage, of patience and energy, of care not to 
go too fast, and the determination never to stand 
still ! Other men have been more fluent in sj)eech, 
but his words had the eloquence which went to 
the heart of the nation. Others were better read in 
books ; but who had a surer knowledge of men and 
things than he? And so, as the years recede, he 
rises higher and higher above all his contemporaries; 
as is the case with all true greatness. 



42 ORATION. 

And our own Massachusetts has also given to 
the records of the race some similar examples of 
great powers devoted to great ends. Such men, 
within our memory, were William Ellery Chai- 
ning, whom Bunsen ranks with the prophets of 
mankind — John Qtjlncy Adams, standing like a 
majestic monument, beat upon with storms, but 
never flinching, and holding on his way without 
haste or rest — -Daniel Webster, whose majestic 
presence, whose all- comprehensive intellect, have 
given us another measure of the possible reach of 
human thought- 1 - Charles Sumner, with a soul 
devoted to everything humane and noble, so simple 
in his manners, so free from guile, so pure from 
every taint of selfish cunning, that he seems like an 
old knight-errant dropped into our time, — one whose 
chosen work it was to pluck the prey from the jaws 
of the wicked, and to help the oppressed to go free. 
What a lesson to time-servers and mere partisans 
was that great outbreak of grateful love which 
accompanied this honest man to his grave! What 
a rebuke to those self-seekers who make political 
life a scramble for office and gain! 

" Vipers, who creep, where man disdains to climb; 
And, having wound their noisome fetters round 
The pillars of our capitol of state, 
Hang, hissing, at the nobler man below." 



JULY 5, 1873 4o 

Let young men mark well this lesson. They may 
listen to many cynical doubts as to the possibility of 
honesty in public life; they may often find it the 
fashion to regard politics as unworthy the attention 
of refined persons; but, while selfish and partisan 
politics are, indeed, unworthy their pursuit, what 
better work can they find than that which con- 
cerns the life, the happiness, the peace, the prosperity 
of the nation? What better study than the complex 
methods by which justice is organized into law, and 
freedom takes form in stable institutions? What 
higher chivalry is there to-day, than that which de- 
votes itself to exposing the plunderers of the State; 
to battling against the mere partisans who seek only 
the spoils of victory; and touching with the Ithuriel 
spear of truth, the lies with which demagogues seek 
to deceive the people? This is a work as high as 
man can do, and will always win the reward of 
human love, reverence and honor. 

And then we have had graceful orators, like 
Edwaed Everett, whose silver arrow always sped 
straight on its course, to the understanding and taste 
of his hearers; and another kind of men like Josiah 
Quincy, — the last, or almost the last, of that race of 
Yankee Romans, who joined to the sagacity running 
in their ~New England blood, a strain of the old heroic 
loyalty to all that is most honorable and most true 

But the list increases while I attempt to bring it to 



44 OKATIOX. 

a close. Our dear old State has never been without 
its heroes, its saints, its martyrs; its old men, whose 
long experience attains something like a strain of 
prophecy ; its young men, modest and manly, " with 
morn on their bright shields of expectation!" 

But one name more I must not omit to mention, — 
one name dear to all our hearts, too soon taken away 
from the great work he seemed made to accomplish. 

The greatness of our war-governor, John A. An- 
drew, was not in his having any one extraordinary 
talent, but in the large, wide, well-balanced character 
of his mind. Because he clearly saw both sides of 
each question, he was always able to decide promptly. 
His conscientious devotion to justice and truth pre- 
vented him from being blinded by vanity or self- 
interest ; the practical tendency of his mind kept him 
from being led away by any mere theory. He was a 
thorough Democrat, but he loved culture and culti- 
vated people. He was an honest philanthropist, yet 
his w T as no rose-w^ater philanthropy. He would not 
sacrifice justice to love. He was a religious man, 
with a most living faith in God, but as free from the 
cant of religion as any man I ever knew. 

Why is it, let me finally ask, that to-day, while all 
Europe is in such unstable equilibrium, here all pol- 
itics are so stable? Why is it that while there, re- 
publics are changed to monarchies, monarchies to 
empires, empires to republics again, and revolutions 



JULY 5, 1875. 45 

are the normal condition of things; here, in this land, 
a Republic has existed nearly a hundred years; 
and, haying overcome our late rebellion, is more 
firmly established to-day than ever? It is be- 
cause we have united freedom and order, law and 
liberty. It is because we have not been afraid of the 
fullest utterance of all truth, on the one hand; and 
have not been ashamed of the worship and service of 
God on the other. Religion, in this country, walks 
hand in hand with freedom, with education, with sci- 
ence. A free press, in this country, is the main sup- 
port of government and law. 

Long may it be so ! Here in Massachusetts was 
first proved the possibility of a free church, in a free 
State, with free schools and a free press. That is 
our chief gift to the cause of human progress; and 
it is a great one, and well deserves the praise of our 
New England poet : — 

" Hough, bleak and hard, our little State 
Is scant of soil, of limits strait ; 
Her yellow sands are sands alone, 
Her only mines are ice and stone. 

" Yet on her rocks, and on her sands, 

And wintry hills, her school-house stands ; 
And what her rugged soil denies, 
The harvest of the mind supplies. 

" Tor well she keeps her ancient stock, 
The stubborn strength of Plymouth Rock, 



ttO ORATION. 

And still maintains, with milder laws, 
And clearer light, the Good Old Cause ! 



" Nor heeds the sceptic's puny hands, 

While near her school the church-spire stands, 

Nor fears the blinded bigot's rule, 

While near her church-spire stands the school ! " 



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